That was funny. Actually since I have all the White Dwarfs. The first time prices wen up on the $25 for 24 models was after the WotR. Look it up. They went a long time without touching those box prices.

All of the releases you mention were in line with WotR.


And I will repeat myself. After a year of WotR trying showing us huge armies of (galahdrim, harad, all the releases you mentioned) WotR forces and articles in EVERY issue of WD then suddenly ZERO articles in WD for months at a time.

I did not pull this out of thin air. But thank you very much for dissecting my post as if it is 100% false when in fact is is mostly fact. I will agree that it is speculation on why thye dropped support and why they raised prices after WotR, but the only info we have for making a hypothesis is on releases, articles, support and prices in the WD and website. And those point to an abrupt about face a little over a year after WotR.
I was one of the many die hards that took WotR positively as you mentioned. I think it is a great game and concept. For new players though, building armies in this manner is very costly and will not yield many new recruits. I don't think there was a decline at the time.. I think the decline started when those first price hikes hit. Many of us already had our core armies, so it was easier to buy the new releases and build up our forces a little for SBG than to try to buy up for WotR. Again, I wish I had bought that many models back then when it was cheap, but with that many releases in that first year of WotR whoe could keep up and build those huge armies? not me. But they look great.

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I think it's a bit of both. SBG was dying, the films had finished and the player base was dropping off. War of the Ring was released as a way to revitalise the system/model range and get people excited about playing with LOTR figures again. Ultimately it didn't really work due to a number of reasons (you needed too many models, the rules were easily breakable, people liked the individual nature of SBG) and so when WOTR lost momentum there was no support for either SBG or WOTR.

The rebirth of SBG only really happened when the new sourcebooks came out at the start of 2012. Up to that point WOTR was very much the dominant system (and indeed when the sourcebooks came out many people were surprised that they were for SBG). They were clearly an advance wave to renew interest in SBG before the Hobbit (interesting fact, the warband system was originally written for the Hobbit but was brought forward for the sourcebooks) and WOTR had run its course.

I highly doubt that GW stopped supporting SBG and raised prices in "retaliation" and because they were "upset" with us for not buying WOTR - they're a business, not a spoilt child. The reality is, had WOTR not existed then there would have been very little SBG content/support from 2008-2012 anyway.

WOTR gave us cool new models and profiles for SBG, we should be grateful for that.

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I agree, the models that came after WotR were fantastic. I didn't like the way they were released though. We use to get supplements, so many of those... and they would have the new SBG stats. But when WotR hit we suddenly needed to buy a WD issue or wait for the Pdf on the website (which came down before the new army books). It became very hard to keep SBG going and that kind of forced SBG to the side as WotR was forced to be the dominant. On the forums at that time people were wanting those SBG stats to play SBG. There were not as many SBG articles or SBG scenario's to use these awesome new models. I am not sure if we collectively stopped buying and playing SBG or if GW steered it this way, up until the three issues of WD that fore told about WotR there were plenty of SBG articles and support. So it is just very strange how it dropped so quickly.

I am glad they made the army books though. Carrying pdf copies, photocopies from WD, and several supplements and the OR was a bit too much.
The decline on releases also lines up very well with the announcement of The Hobbit bought by GW. So at the time I think they may have cleared up all the LOTR releases in that year to clear the path for all hands on deck for making Hobbit stuff. As we know that has not worked out to well since even Peter Jackson didn't know what the film was going to look like until the premier so how anyone was able to sculpt for the film is beyond me.

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I'm inclined to agree with Sithious. WOTR killed LOTR enthusiasm in my local area. Even after the movies my local GW still had LOTR SBG nights twice a week and when you walked in the shop LOTR dominated the most shelf -space and you couldn't walk in without someone buying something LOTR. If you walked in and saw a model you were even considering you would grab it off the shelves as you considered your purchases.

When WOTR came out I was upset by the new faction balance. I played Harad primarily and my friends played Gondor and the Galadrhim. The new rules I felt punished me but I was willing to give it a shot. After one game I hated the way that the Haradrim played so much that I switched to Dwarves (which were before that my backup team) and was much more pleased with how they fared in the next few games. But none of us enjoyed it as much as SBG and from what my local GW was saying this was the next evolution of the game.

Within a few months time the LOTR shelf space shrank significantly and the LOTR game nights stopped.
Now even with the release of the Hobbit that particular GW doesn't carry SBG stock

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I apologise if my post was harsher than intended, however -

Over the course of the decade+ I've had to defend the SBG from unfounded criticism from 40k/WHFB players who "blame" LotRs for all the woes with their hobbies. I just find it hypocritical for a SBG player to cast similar "blame" on WotRs for the problems with our hobby.



My recollection is somewhat different - as Kirby had said in 2005 "the bubble had burst."

I think the decline started around the release of Scourging of the Shire, because the big appeal to LotRs had been its tie in with the PJ movies.

Following Pelennor Fields (Mumak), most of the major troops and characters FROM THE MOVIES had been covered. If gamers hadn't been attracted to the central clashes (Rohan/Isenguard, Gondor/Mordor, Fellowship/Moria/Uruks) then there was little likelyhood that many would be swayed by relatively generic GW visualisations of common fantasy archtypes based on minor parts of the book and movies - Midgets? Woses? Pirates? Mahud? Samurai? Poorly sculpted Wood Elfs? Undead?

Consequently the amount of fresh blood being inducted into the hobby declined to the point where it didn't replace the veterans who left out of lack of interest (or outright hostility (Isenguard Troll, SKoDAs, Named Wraiths, etc) ) in GW's creations. Generally each new release (until WotRs) seemed to attract less and less discussion and interest from a seemingly smaller online community.

To be sure there were hiccups in the decline - Mines of Moria and the Journey books generated a fair amount of interest - and maybe Legions , but overall I don't recall any year where the online community didn't seem smaller and less excited about the game than the year before.



I have White Dwarfs too. I have also bought models since RotK was released. GW had been increasing their prices regularly across the board.

When I started the hobby it was $22.50 CDN for 24 plastics. Then $25. Then $28. Then $30. Then WotRs hit and they increased to $32.50

The next increase was $27 for 12 in 2012 when the*SBG* books were released (since been raised to $29.50)

Again I fail to see where the failure of WotR was directly responsible for the price increases, particularly given that during the same period WHFB AND 40k model prices increased as well. Their boxes sizes were cut in half without a proportional reduction in cost. Did GW hike their prices in retaliation for not buying WotR armies too?




And happened over a ONE AND A HALF YEAR period - you miss MY point - do you think had GW not released WotR you would have even gotten that many new releases? Much less gotten MORE?

*IF* the SBG wasn't in decline preceding WotRs launch then in theory the SBG army books (Gondor in Flames, Mordor, Harad) were selling well. If that was truly the case why didn't GW finish the series (Rohan, Isenguard, and especially Elves) simultaneously with WotRs?




I'm not entirely sure the point you're trying to make? White Dwarf has been a glorified promo piece for new releases for many years now. If they weren't releasing models for LotRs why would you expect, given that focus, LotRs content?

Again back to my point - if WotRs hadn't been made do you think the SBG would have had even MORE releases during that same period to justify more frequent WD content??




All I'm saying is IMO the evidence suggests the SBG has been negatively impacted far more by GW's growing ineptitude than by the launch of WotRs and it's subsequent failure (generally attributable to that same ineptitude.)

I know I can have some strong opinions and not always word it well. So I apologize. I have been collecting since pre Two Tower days. I went through all the starter sets. I have followed forums from GW forums, to TLA and then to here. I have been active in 5 hobby shops (including a GW store) of which only 1 exists now and it is not the GW store. Many hobby shops went out of business Long before WotR, With online stores, forums, and general hobby stores like AC Moore and Micheals it is hard for a store with a specialty to sell enough to make rent.

I formed my Opinion about WotR alost two years after it was released. I bought the book when it was released. I made move trays. I bought several plastic sets to beef up my armies. I bought 8-10 blisters of each metal troop to build WotR armies. I was in 100% to trying this out. It upset me that the SBG rules were not being supplied in supplements. It bothered me that they were not making many scenario's for SBG games with the new models that were awesome. But there were more articles in each WD issue in that time then almost all the years prior. Now they always had some content for SBG in every issue, but suddenly there was a lot of content and almost none of it was worth reading. Opinion of course. I just missed converting articles, and painting articles that were good, not how to slap and army out in a day paint jobs. I also missed the scenario's with story arcs to our favorite characters. all of this was far and few between now.
The price hikes happened. It just lines up well with the aftermath of a new rules system that requires huge armies and the sudden lack of support of SBG. I did not ever notice a decline in forum posts or WIP threads or battle reports until about 4 years ago. The bubble I hear people mention must be limited to their own circle, since 2006-2010 is when I played the most battles and painted the most models. It was after that time that friends I know dropped off. And players I played regular said they can't keep up with GW prices and they don't want to play the WotR version of the game. So these two things are haunting, and I have read similar things on forums from people long gone... that They didn't like the WotR unbalance and that the price hikes were too much... but up until WotR they were on board.
So you are right, WotR is not really to blame, it is just a marker to note I the history of our game and that marker points to half box content and price hikes and a unpopular game... so it is not a happy marker in our history. I still would play WotRbut want SBG too and love y Battle Companies, I think they all have a place, but to go all in to the WotR system as GW did was a big mistake, it should have been supported in parallel to SBG. It is all good. And yes, as a SBG player I do think SBG would have stayed the same strength had they not released WotR, it may have been less than the unknown numbers of players during the films, but it was still going at that same rate. It is again an opinion, but I think SBG would have been just fine and those releases were awesome, and still are awesome models for our SBG game now. And I still miss a regular section for LOTR/Hobbit. Why would you go from some content in every issue for ten years straight to zero content and maybe a single article every 4-6 issues? Did sales dive that much in 2010? But all the years before that sales were fine enough for regular content.. that doesn't point to a 2005 or 2007 bubble burst, that points to a 2009 bubble burst and a 2010 reaction to it.

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Not really... The evidence supports that the release of WoTR killed off most of the LoTR hobby at the time.

At the GW store I went to, there were always at least some people there for LoTR, after WoTR was released, they had a short 3 game tournament, after which, I didn't see any of the players for ~ a year, when I did, the person told me that they had liked the rules for WoTR, but the balance was so bad that it wasn't worth playing...

One of the issues I saw immediately in WoTR was in the "hard to kill", "very hard to kill", and "extremely hard to kill" tables... The "hard to kill" and "very hard to kill" tables were almost laughable. Trolls, and other normal monsters were awful in WoTR, in contrast to SBG where they can potentially be great, while, the extremely hard to kill models were just ridiculous... A dragon was able to easily kill an entire 750 point army (saying that points value because i never played it at a higher points value; was trying it for fun... in 3 games, it killed 3, 750 point armies without even getting a wound counter, against Mordor, Dwarves, and Isengard) without even going down half the wound table, sometimes not taking wounds at all, while the rest of the army didn't need to do anything.
Some of the heroes, Druzhag, wraiths, etc, were far too powerful for their points, because of their effects, Druzhag could summon spiders behind whatever his formation is about to get into combat with, which are then guaranteed a rear charge for their +1 to wound special rule.

The next tournament they held, I was the only person who showed up out of the 6 or so that had registered.

At that point, the lotr model section of the store was shrinking, and it was rare to see anyone in the store for lotr, though before the release of WoTR, there were almost always LOTR players when I went in.

Reading some of the other posts here it seems that it wasn't an isolated incident.
Somewhere around 70% of the player base left within 3-4 months of the release of WoTR (can't confirm it, but that is what I heard from sources that are generally reliable)...

The idea that WoTR did not contribute to SBG's decline is just as silly as the idea that WoTR was the only reason for it's decline, but it was a huge part of it.

Sure, they released WoTR to revamp SBG, but it did the opposite once the even semi-competitive players started abusing the broken aspects of the game, which wasn't even difficult to do... It wasn't like you even needed special tactics or cheesy tricks to break the game. Certain models were just way too strong for the points.
That said, the game only had 3 major problems: the hard to kill tables, magic, and points values. If those 3 things were adjusted, the game would be fine, but the fact that you are completely zoned out of certain models if you just want to have a fun game is just as frustrating as having to play against those models.

They stopped focusing on WoTR a long time before Hobbit was released, and were actually putting quite a bit of emphasis on SBG with unit profile releases and scenarios.


Yes, WFB and 40k prices also went up.
Though attributing the player-base drop to price hikes would be silly. A lot of people already had enough models of a particular army for WoTR, (they had actually tried it at reasonably high points values) yet they stopped playing anyway, despite having played SBG consistently for years.

The "bubble" isn't a player construct based upon perception as to how easy or hard it was to personally find a game - it is a metaphor specifically used in GW annual reports and profit warnings in 2005 and subsequent years to explain the massive drop in revenue compared to the previous year (when RotK was released) which GW execs OFFICIALLY attributed SPECIFICALLY to declining LotRs sales.

As for content...

Question: Why didn't they drop the range completely in 2010 given that WotR failed and the SBG was at a new low in playership?

Answer: Because the investment on the LotRs range had already been made and it was a reasonable assumption that the upcoming hobbit movies might renew interest.


It was the same in 2005-2008. The fact that they were still supporting the range was not necessarily indicative that the range was doing *well* but rather the investment had largely been made and the hope was that something (One Rule Book/MOM/Journey Books/Mass Combat System/Eventual Rumoured Hobbit Movie) would turn things around.

Look at the difference in 2013 - the bulk of the range was pulled from stores because, despite the hobbit it was NOT selling well and there are likely no plans for continued support beyond the third film so they don't envision sales to turn around to justify store shelf space.



Where did I or anyone else suggest that WotRs did not contribute to the SBG's decline?

However it's silly to argue that WotRs was a "huge" part of the decline of the LotRs hobby when the head of GW and his chief of finances were already telling their shareholders that the LotRs hobby had hugely declined YEARS before WotRs was launched.




In the 3 GW stores I frequented there were maybe 6-12+ people each who were into LotRs at the time of the movies. 2-3 years later there was almost never people there, especially after the mines of moria hype had passed. At the 3 independents I frequent sales had dropped to nothing by 2006 - literally the exact same boxes sat on the shelf for years. The few regular SBG opponents I did have switched to WHFBs or 40k to get regular games or left miniature gaming altogether.

Again all of this happened WELL BEFORE WotRs.

But anecdotal evidence is largely irrelevant either way.

I just read through financial reports from 2004 to present... 60 pages plus each, it is not as fun as it sounds.

But I at least can have some insight into what is going on.

The profits of LOTR dove after 2004 as we know, but so did sales in all the other core games. 2005 is the forst and only time that LOTr is mentioned by name in the preamble and ceo reports. It states how sales in LOTR were higher than they could have ever anticipated and how thankful they are that they voted to take it on, and that it dropped off faster than they ever anticipated as well. This was the film release bubble, the end of films.
Now they also hint at the reasons they got into LOTR in the first place, 1 being to keep competition from getting it (which maybe why they kept it up to the hobbit acquisition) and the second reason was to cash in on the films success to use profits to support the other two games.

So they got what they wanted out of LOTR.

I did not find any evidence that LOTR got worse. Sales across the boards stayed low until 2009 when they started going up. They also talk about the cycle of up and down from 1980 to present. The metal scare was admittedly false. Prices went up for metal so they raised prices on all metal models, then the next quarter they say metal prices went back to normal so they saw a spike in profit and kept it that way as they switched over to more plastic kits.

So. I cannot say SBG was on the decline based on this, but that it had one sharp decline but stayed regular up until today. All hobbies took a hit in that same period (and the economy too) and the CEO mentions that many hobby stores were closing world wide. This was not SBG, this was not WOTR, it was a general fall out across all hobbys and table top games. And in recent years all hobby and table top games are seeing growth again, even GW competitors.

So I guess though WotR was not popular, it is not to blame for SBG loss. But I can still say that GW steered us away from SBG at the time of WOTR release and beyond it. They fixed that when they released the army books and now ar not supporting WotR. I just think they could have supported both and fixed WotR and boosted SBG and made many more tie in campigns that use both systems. It is a shame. Just like the advertisement theories they report about how word of mouth is better than adds to the general public... I disagree and agree... I think they can advertise to the general public, get more of them to start gaming and playing, and they will spread it more via word of mouth.

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